


The Butcher

by FyreAlchemage



Series: Minelab Madness [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:48:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27505585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyreAlchemage/pseuds/FyreAlchemage
Summary: Originally written for my writing class in 2017, now available for all to read. A sort of mystery, featuring a serial killer who may also be incriminated for more than murder. I never know how to summarize.This version may be revised and edited. The original text was a draft, after all.
Series: Minelab Madness [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2010211





	The Butcher

Bella Hawthorne had a perfect reason to believe she was being hunted down. After all, some psycho serial killer was on the loose, calling themselves “the Butcher”.  
Bella put her green hair clips in her black hair, happy for the nice feeling they gave her when she wore them. She grabbed her notebook and history textbook and went off to Moonbucks Coffee. Moonbucks was a great place to study, and they served the best coffee too.  
Bella got in and saw the place was packed. She sat at a nearly empty table (there was only one other person at it) and opened her book to chapter seven.  
As she was trying to read the boring text, Bella looked at the person sitting across from her. A book, The Masked Massacrer, obscured his face, but he had curly blonde hair and wore a white lab coat. Bella noticed the lab coat had dark red stains on it, but paid no mind.  
“And what can I get for you, ma'am?” the server asked Bella.  
“Um…” Bella hadn't decided yet, so she just said, “Coffee.”  
“Mm-hmm,” the server said. “That's a good choice. Pretty much the only choice, am I right? Anyway, it'll be right out. We just got to brew it up nice and good.”  
The server walked away, and Bella opened her notebook to take notes on early civilizations. Just as her pencil hit the paper, her table partner closed his book with a slam.  
“How many times do we gotta say it?” someone scolded him. “When you're done reading, gently close the book. Don't do that!”  
“Herb, don't scold him like that,” the scolder’s wife said, “he's only a butcher.”  
“The only butcher I want to hear about is the butcher shop’s tasty meat,” Herb argued. He and his wife argued some more, and Bella took the opportunity to study the man's face.  
Red eyes, pale skin… this guy was an albino. Bella didn't know anyone else who was, so she could easily recognize this one. She remembered seeing him at the butcher shop, cutting meat.  
“Are you the guy who works at Hector’s Fine Cuts?” Bella asked.  
“I'm Hector,” the man said. “So yes, I do work there. Who're you?”  
“Bella,” Bella said.  
“Bella,” Hector repeated. “Hawthorne?”  
“How’d you know?” Bella asked.  
“I… don’t know,” Hector said. “I’m going to go now--the shop probably has a line now, and I still need to collect my meat.”  
“Okay then.” Hector left, and Bella continued studying.

It was nearly eight when she left. Bella decided to stop by Hector’s Fine Cuts, as she remembered she was hosting a meat party tomorrow night for her friends, who were all meat-lovers like her.  
“Hello, Bella,” Hector said when she walked in. He was using a very long, very sharp knife to cut up something that looked strangely like a human arm.  
“I’d like some meat,” Bella said. “A lot, actually.”  
“You can take what you want from there,” Hector said, pointing to a large bin with Meaty Bits on it. Bella took several pieces, paid, and left--but not before noticing that Hector had began to chop a human head.  
Bella rushed home.

The next day, Bella was reading the newspaper. She saw the headline Butcher Butchers Another and read it, her eyes growing wider and wider as she did so. Now this was horrible. The Butcher had cut up the corpse of a young woman with Bella’s features, minus the hair clips. What remained was a single finger, clothes, some odds and ends from the girl’s purse, and a few splatters of blood.  
Bella was getting sick at the mention of blood--she wasn’t keen on looking at it--so she set the paper down and headed out, going to contact the Klein Detectives--the only detectives in the city--about the fact that her doppelganger was killed.

Oskar Klein was busy reading The Masked Massacrer which had been left behind at table 5 in Moonbucks. The sticky note attached to the inside cover said Belongs to Hector. If found, deliver to Hector’s Fine Cuts when we’re open.  
“Nothing in here, but it was left behind for a reason,” Oskar said. He saw a tiny notation in the margin of page 666, and zoomed in with his robotic eyes. He was a cyborg, and he was proud of it--his detective skills were unmatched.  
The scrawl was the same as the person who wrote the note, but with different words: Bella Hawthorne. 22. 12 Merry Way. College student. It seemed like notes on a person. Oskar knew that a Bella Hawthorne lived in the city on 12 Merry Way. She was a college student and at the young age of 22. Coincidence? I don’t believe in ‘em.  
“Oskar Klein,” Oskar told himself in his favorite voice to fake, “your mission is to find out who this Hector guy thinks he is, and to stop him from doing whatever it is he’s--”  
“Detective Klein!” a woman shouted. She looked just like the girl who’d died. “Someone’s trying to kill me.”  
“I’m already on it,” Oskar said. “But can you give me some info first--stuff about a guy named Hector?”  
“Yeah,” the woman said. “I’m Bella Hawthorne.”  
“Figured that. You know me--Oskar Klein! Super duper cyborg detective, oh yeah.” He’d sung that last bit, as he usually did.  
“So about Hector,” Bella said. “He’s a butcher, but he sells human meat instead of animals’. I bought some meat from him to serve tonight, and I brought in a piece--can you analyze it?”  
“Sure. I gotta go investigate the crime scene though, but when you come back tomorrow--you should--it’ll be all done for you.”  
Bella left, and Oskar went to the scene of the crime to look for himself, perfectly aware that someone was watching him from the third-floor balcony of an apartment building. He didn’t know who it was, but his scanner had identified the location of the watcher. I gotta improve that thing the next time I’m at the Minelab, he noted to himself, storing it in his mental filing cabinet under Important.  
Oskar looked at what was left of the corpse, finding nothing useful except a driver’s license which labeled the victim as Isabella Hazel, who looked just like Bella Hawthorne. They were the same age, too, going to the same college--in the same classes, even. The killer had gone wrong with the name only, but perhaps that was intentional. Who would know but the killer?  
And Oskar was sure the killer was the one watching him….

At exactly 7:30 pm, Bella opened the door for her friends Kate and Dmitri. Sadly, they were missing someone--Isabella hadn’t come.  
“Hey, so what happened to Isa?” Kate asked. “Did she… is she…”  
“Why can’t you bring yourself to say the words die and dead?” Dmitri asked Kate. “We can all assume that Isa died, no thanks to that stupid serial killer.”  
“Whoever he is, I’m gonna serial kill him,” Kate said.  
“Yeah, that’s definitely a good idea,” Dmitri said. He and Kate sat in two of Bella’s four dining chairs and waited for Bella to give them the word that they could eat the tasty-looking dinner set before them.  
“Let’s just eat now, because honestly that’s what I got you here for,” Bella said. They did.  
When Kate took the first bite, she choked. Dmitri did too, and he asked, “Where’s this from?”  
“Hector’s Fine Cuts,” Bella said,  
“Yeah, okay,” Dmitri said. “I’m just going to… well…” He went into the apartment’s tiny bathroom and both Bella and Kate heard horrible noises as if Dmitri was in great pain.  
“What’s going on with him?” Kate asked. Then she answered herself, “This meat’s poisoned.”  
“But why’d it only really affect…” Bella began.  
“I don’t know! Call up Oskar Klein.”  
Bella called the cyborg detective, and he answered, “Something’s gone wrong, am I right?”  
“Yep. My friends got poisoned by the meat, so get over here!”  
“Oskar Klein! Coming at you lightning fast, like outside your window ri-ight now!” Oskar had sung again.  
Bella looked out her window and saw that Oskar was there, floating in midair because of one of his cyborg parts.  
Bella opened the window and let Oskar in, and the detective immediately got to work examining the meat.  
“Whoa, this is poison all right,” Oskar said. “But it’s not a lot. But wait a second here! This has a lot of poison in it. So who got the unlucky plate?”  
“Obviously the guy dying in the bathroom,” Kate said.  
“I’m not dying!” Dmitri called. “Not anymore, anyway, because it turns out that you have some window cleaner in your cabinet which happens to be the antidote.”  
“How is window cleaner an antidote to anything?” Bella asked, unconvinced, especially since Dmitri’s voice had changed.  
“It just… is?”  
“I think you’re not who I think you are,” Bella said. “Who are you?”  
“No one, really, my dear,” not-Dmitri said. The bathroom door opened, and a pair of bloody hands held Dmitri’s corpse, hiding the person behind. “I’m just Dmitri, your friend.”  
“No you’re not,” both Oskar and Bella said at the same time. Kate was cowering in the corner, afraid.  
“Really? I think I am,” the person said, moving Dmitri’s head to look at Bella. She still couldn’t see who it was. “Come closer now, Bella. I need to tell you something.”  
“Oh no, I’m not coming up to you,” Bella said. Oskar did, however. He pushed Dmitri’s body out of the way, revealing a blond-haired person with red eyes. He wore a bloody lab coat, and a name tag was pinned to it reading Hector L, butcher.  
“Wait a sec,” Oskar said. “The butcher is the Butcher? That was so obvious--we’ve been trying to find out for weeks! But why? Why do you want to kill people, and why do you serve human meat?”  
“It’s a simple, one-worded explanation,” Hector said. “It starts with the letter c, and ends with a-n-n-i-b-a-l-i-s-m.  
“You’re going to jail for a long time, Hector,” Oskar said.  
And so the serial killer was arrested and the city was safe again.

Deep in the Minelab, though, in the Clone Lab room, Dr. T flipped a switch. A clone of Hector awakened, ready for its orders.  
Dr. T gave it its orders, which were “Destroy Oskar Klein.”

**Author's Note:**

> To be continued in The Scientist.


End file.
